A Threshold That Took Two Years to Cross
Bitcoin reached $110,247 on Sunday morning, touching an all-time high before retreating slightly to trade around $108,900 at the time of writing. The move caps a 14-day rally of approximately 22% from a base near $89,500 and marks the first time the asset has traded above the six-figure barrier set when it briefly touched $109,000 during the January 2025 inauguration week.
The proximate trigger was a week of extraordinary demand from US spot BTC exchange-traded funds. Combined net inflows across the eleven approved spot BTC ETFs — led by BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) — totalled $3.14 billion in the seven trading days ending Friday, April 25, according to data compiled by BitMEX Research. That surpasses the previous weekly record of $2.7 billion set in March 2025.
ETF Mechanics: Where the Demand Is Coming From
BlackRock’s IBIT alone absorbed $1.84 billion of the weekly inflows, bringing its total AUM to $68.9 billion and cementing its position as the fastest-growing ETF in the history of the US market by AUM accumulation in the first two years of trading. Fidelity’s FBTC added $612 million, and ARK 21Shares’ ARKB took in $287 million. Only one product — Grayscale’s GBTC — saw net outflows, continuing a two-year trend of gradual AUM erosion from the legacy trust structure.
The sourcing of this capital matters. Bernstein Research published a client note on April 22 estimating that approximately 60% of Q1 2026 BTC ETF inflows originated from registered investment advisors (RIAs) and family offices implementing formal Bitcoin allocation policies for the first time, rather than from retail investors or hedge funds. The note cited adoption of a standard 1–3% Bitcoin sleeve in diversified portfolios as the structural driver, enabled by changes to ERISA guidance in late 2025 that removed the prior compliance friction for fiduciaries.
State Street Global Advisors, which manages the SPDR Bitcoin ETF (STBT) launched in October 2025, separately disclosed that 14 of the 25 largest US pension plans had approved Bitcoin exposure by Q1 2026 — up from two at the time of the initial spot ETF approvals in January 2024.
The Macro Context: Fed Hold Extends the Carry
The rally did not occur in a vacuum. Bitcoin’s appreciation since early April has tracked a broader risk-on rotation in which the Federal Reserve’s extended hold — the Fed has now kept rates at 4.25–4.5% for six consecutive meetings — has compressed real yields while leaving dollar liquidity conditions easy relative to the hiking cycle. The correlation between Bitcoin and the Nasdaq 100 reached 0.72 over the trailing 30 days, according to Kaiko data, the highest in 18 months, reinforcing the view that institutional allocators are treating BTC as a high-beta tech-adjacent asset rather than an independent macro hedge.
Gold, which previously competed with Bitcoin for the “store of value” allocation in institutional portfolios, has pulled back 3% from its own all-time high reached in March, with several large asset managers publicly shifting a portion of their precious metals weighting into BTC ETFs on the basis of superior liquidity and tighter bid-ask spreads at scale.
Derivatives Signal Stretched But Not Euphoric
Option and futures markets suggest the rally has room but warrants monitoring. Bitcoin perpetual futures open interest is at $38.4 billion across major exchanges, the highest on record, but the funding rate — the periodic payment from long positions to short — stands at 0.03% per 8-hour period, elevated but well below the 0.1%+ levels that preceded the sharp corrections in December 2024 and August 2025. The options market shows the heaviest open interest concentrated at the $115,000 and $120,000 call strikes for the June 27 expiry, implying that derivative traders have not yet closed out upside bets.
Coinbase’s institutional trading desk noted in its weekly client letter that OTC desk inquiries — a leading indicator of large-block purchases — were at their highest level since Q4 2024 heading into the weekend. Whether the demand converts into sustained spot buying or fades as profit-taking emerges at round-number resistance levels will determine whether $110,000 becomes a floor or a ceiling in the near term.
Sources: BitMEX Research ETF flow tracker (April 25, 2026), Bernstein Research BTC Institutional Adoption Note (April 22, 2026), State Street Global Advisors Q1 2026 Investor Update, Kaiko market data, Coinbase Institutional weekly letter (April 25, 2026).
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